Would it be too much to ask that RandR rotation settings be made consistent each time X starts? The windows drivers remember my settings so I wouldn't expect this to be too much of a problem here on linux. Why doesn't nvidia-settings 1.0 store this info?

Also, for some reason, on the rotated screen, fullscreen GL visuals look like they haven't been rotated properly, and are therefore cropped off one side or the other. A problem when xscreensaver activates. There are some possibly-related NVRM errors to this effect in the logs:

I'll need to check if there's a good reason why `nvidia-settings` doesn't currently remember the RandR rotation settings, but the functionality you request seems like a good improvement to me (for those inclined to help improve `nvidia-settings`, the source is available from the NVIDIA FTP server). For now, I guess you could run the `xrandr` utility from your ~/.xinitrc file to rotate the display at startup (e.g. `xrandr -o inverted`). As to the problem with full-screen OpenGL applications, I expect this is an application problem, but please submit a bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com.

2. Running 'xrandr -o left' from an xterm on the desired x screen also works correctly. This is because DISPLAY=:0.n is exported to the environment automatically when an xterm is started on display n.

3. What you suggested is to add 'xrandr -o left' to .xinitrc, which is not called from a console on either of my two displays, and so I would have to explicitly give the display to rotate on the command.

Actually, my original post was completely mistaken. When I execute just xrandr from a console, it prints a list of possible modes and rotations. 'xrandr -d :0.1' seems to do nothing so I assumed it was broken. 'xrandr -d :0.1 -o left' actually has the desired effect, so for now I will use this as a workaround. Thank you very much!